About five days had passed since we joined the survivor group.
It was a short time, if you wanted to call it short, but Kim Soyeong and I had succeeded in blending into the survivor group.
Of course, there had been plenty of twists and turns along the way.
Some of the survivors were still wary of us, and that included two mutants.
‘But it’s not a problem.’
Even if you counted everyone who rejected me, there were only about ten of them.
Since the number of survivors here exceeded two hundred, that amounted to barely five percent.
As for most of the remaining ninety-five percent……
“Angel! Please save us!”
…Well, I suppose you could say my strategy had worked effectively.
“Please save us!”
“Please save us!”
Sometimes I worried that I might have seized their hearts a little too strongly in just five days, but……
‘Well… it’s not like I don’t understand it at all. And it’s good for me. The faster I can deal with things, the better.’
Still, I couldn’t help the sighs that kept bursting out inside me.
To be honest, being praised was truly enjoyable, but this kind of blind devotion was still burdensome.
Kim Jihu alone had been enough to weigh on me, but now that I was receiving the praise of hundreds of people like this, I felt like my face wouldn’t survive it.
‘But, well, it’s not as if I can just not do it……’
Hiding my true feelings, I put a bright smile on my face.
A smile that was too radiant might narrow the distance between us too much, so I gave them a faint smile to create a mysterious atmosphere.
It wasn’t as if I was trying to become some cult leader. My role, to the end, was that of an idol.
If people became too close to their idol, all sorts of troublesome things would arise. The weight of my words would diminish, too.
“Ahh……!”
“Angel……!”
Fortunately, that alone had a tremendous effect.
After all, if nothing else, my appearance was truly that of a beautiful girl.
Even without doing anything special, my looks alone were enough to dominate the atmosphere.
‘Even I still haven’t gotten used to it.’
In any case, I slowly looked around at the people gazing at me in rapture.
‘More gathered than usual.’
Around a hundred and fifty people seemed to have gathered in the middle of the athletic field with me at the center.
Except for those who didn’t believe in me, or the few who had run into trouble, everyone was gathered here.
No matter how little the survivors had to do, there was only one reason for this.
‘…To hold worship.’
Keeping the smile on my face, I let out a deep sigh inside.
I hadn’t wanted an event this thorough, but Kim Soyeong had strongly insisted on it.
She said that events like this were the most important for gathering people and uniting them.
When she put it that way, what could I do?
I didn’t know much about religion, and she was a detective who had clashed with cults several times.
It was only natural that she knew more than I did.
In fact, every time we held a worship service, the number of believers increased exponentially.
“Then, we will begin.”
Had the time come before I knew it? As I kept smiling brightly, Kim Soyeong began the worship service.
It had only been five days, but even that felt deeply moving to me.
‘…At first, there were quite a lot of negative reactions.’
Since someone who had been expelled under less-than-favorable circumstances was leading the worship service, it was inevitable that the initial response would be poor.
But that atmosphere did not last long.
Her way with words was that good, and she also had my authority behind her.
When I asked her yesterday just how she had managed it, she answered that it was all thanks to me.
‘I feel like that answer was praising me too much, but she’s doing well, so whatever……’
There was no need for me to interfere.
“……Amen.”
It seemed the prayer had just ended.
Following Kim Soyeong’s words, the others also murmured amen, closed their eyes, and prayed.
Most of the people who had come to see me now had their eyes closed.
This was the opportunity.
‘A chance to scratch my back!’
My back had been itching since earlier because of my feathers, but with so many eyes focused on me, I hadn’t been able to scratch it until now.
‘Hngh!’
The good thing about this body was that it was incredibly flexible.
When I had to move my body, I was as stiff as scrap metal, but fundamentally, I was on the flexible side.
Once I had scratched my back like that, it seemed the prayer had just come to an end.
‘Ahem, no one saw that, right?’
In any case, I had even managed to scratch the back that had been itching during prayer time, killing two birds with one stone.
As I sat there smiling in satisfaction to myself, it had already moved on to the sermon.
“God is always silent before our pain. We all know that fact all too well. Even when we were cast into this hell and cried out for salvation, has God ever answered our prayers?”
“No!”
“The God of the present remains silent even before our cries. But the Angel took pity on us and descended to this place, taking those precious steps in order to guide us beyond this hell.”
“Ooh, Angel!”
“The Angel seeks not only to save us in body, but also to save us in spirit, and I have been redeemed by Her. That is why I can dare to stand before you, and it is also proof that your families and loved ones can be redeemed as well…….”
The sermon continued for quite some time.
I didn’t know how good she was, but at least she was better than me. The reaction was enthusiastic, so she must have been doing well.
‘Of course, for me, listening to that in real time is agony…!’
After enduring it while thinking of other things, the sermon seemed to be nearing its end before I knew it.
“Then, the twelfth to be redeemed, please come up here.”
At those words, a young man in a wheelchair came up onto the platform.
From what I had heard, he had once been a national figure skating representative.
Just as his value was skyrocketing, he got into a traffic accident and suffered a permanent disability in his legs.
“Ooh, Angel…!”
He was looking up at me with a face full of emotion, tears and snot streaming down.
I kept smiling brightly and placed my hand on top of his head.
At the same time, light burst forth.
When that cluster of light reached the man, his body began to heal at a rapid pace.
“O-ohhh…! I-I can walk now…!”
As soon as he received my healing, the man sprang to his feet.
As if even that fact astonished him, the man shed tears of joy and stammered out words of gratitude.
A person who had been unable to escape life in a wheelchair for the rest of his life could now walk on his own.
At that traditional miracle, the people who had come to worship me let out cries that were almost screams.
I smiled at the audience once more, then sat back down.
The rest would somehow be handled by Soyeong.
“Did you see it! The miracle that the Angel has wrought…….”
Since the manifestation of the miracle had been the highlight of this event, it did not take very long to wrap things up.
“…Then, with this, we will conclude today’s worship service. Amen.”
“Ahh, amen!”
“Amen!”
Of course, even after the event ended, the people did not disperse.
They said they wanted to keep me in their eyes for even a little longer, or something like that.
In the end, we were the ones who had to leave first.
Once the event was over, Soyeong led me to the building that had been set aside for me.
‘The grounds are so large and there are so few people that there was an entire empty building. That’s what made this possible.’
In any case, thanks to that, I was able to have my own private space in a place like this.
This was a luxury I hadn’t been able to enjoy even back at the base.
As soon as I arrived in the room inside the building, I flopped down.
“Huaaaaah! It’s finally over!”
“You worked hard, Angel.”
“You worked hard too, Soyeong.”
After smiling nonstop, even the corners of my mouth were aching now.
Massaging the area around my lips, I complained.
“…I didn’t think it would go this well.”
“As long as the Angel is here, this is only natural.”
The truth was, wasn’t religion something you couldn’t believe in all the way down to the depths of your heart the instant you started believing?
Most religions encouraged continuous participation to help solidify faith.
But the time it took for us to take control of the survivor group was only five days.
It was a truly unstoppable pace.
“Even so, it feels a little too fast.”
“…Absolutely not.”
“…Pardon?”
“The people here have survived all this time by fighting against the darkness and the unidentified monsters hiding within it. The Angel, who illuminates the world simply by existing, is no different from one who has opened the eyes of the blind, and the miracles the Angel has brought forth are…….”
“Stop, stop! There’s no need to do that all the way here.”
I hurriedly cut her off as the atmosphere began flowing toward praise of me.
It felt like, as she conducted worship and proselytized, her own faith was deepening more and more.
Why did that make me think of Kim Jihu even more……?
In any case, the people here had been exposed for a long time to extreme circumstances that could never be called ordinary.
In the midst of that, someone appeared who solved their biggest problem and even performed miracles, so it was impossible for them not to believe.
Yes, even so, five days did feel fast, but I could understand it.
Still, good was good.
‘The greater my influence grows, the harder it will be for the mimic beast to act.’
As long as I spread light, the mimic beast would no longer be able to act openly like before.
Public order was returning to some extent.
In this way, we had managed to rise to an unshakable position in just five days, but……
“…So, Soyeong.”
“Yes, Angel.”
“Does that leader old man still have no intention of seeing us?”
“…That is correct.”
I still hadn’t even seen the face of the old man they called the leader.
The only people he contacted were an extremely small number of individuals. Other than that, he apparently never appeared at all.
‘…This is nothing but suspicious.’
Could it be that his head had already been eaten by the mimic beast?
Feeling inexplicably uneasy, I shook my head to clear it.
“…Then since the worship service is over, there’s nothing else on the schedule today, right?”
“…There is one scheduled visit from Jeon Minchan today.”
“Ahh, that hawk beastman.”
The hawk beastman who had aimed his gun at me.
Our first meeting had been extremely negative, but after becoming a believer over the past five days, he had requested an audience with me.